The following is an excerpt of:
Hiraeth:
The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became
By Tex Batmart
If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here
Interlude: Animals And Other Pets
The young boy had grown up without a pet of any sort. His mother was deathly allergic to felines (the inspiration for his purchase of a cat when he moved out at seventeen), and had stated repeatedly that it would be unfair to own a dog, since neither he nor his mother were home enough to spend the time with it which it would almost certainly require. Having never had much experience with animals, therefore (outside of the usual baby and toddler toys which made noises at the slightest swing of a door, turn of a dial, or press of a button), it came as no surprise that he always viewed animals with healthy level of mistrust. A dozen or so years later, he mused if perhaps animals reacted to him based upon his own deeply-seated prejudices. Either way, the reality of the situation was that he never truly felt comfortable around them.
When he was seven or eight (or maybe it was nine or ten), his mother took pity on him and his desire toward pet ownership, and purchased him an aquarium, and allowed him to pick out a fish. The only thing which he would be able to recall regarding any of this was that the fish was black, and quite possibly demented. It would swim up to the waterline to snap its jaws at bubbles, and then shoot downward to gather up and shoot out pebbles. Never the one to pass up an opportunity to categorize something, the young man (who would, one day, grow into legend) christened his pet fish, Poppinsink. It wasn’t really much of a name, but, to be fair, neither was it much of a fish.
When it was discovered floating upon its back, Tex petitioned of his mother that he be allowed to conduct an autopsy (for he was of an age when he was interested in how things work), only to be denied. Thwarted, he set about planning an elaborate funeral for his pet, all the while intending to exhume it just a day or two later, or when his mother had forgotten. Unfortunately, he wound up sidelined by distraction, and kept indoors by heavy rain, and by the time he had remembered, the little marker under which he’d buried his first pet had washed away.
It wouldn’t be until he was a man that Tex Batmart would have the opportunity to try his hand again at caring for an animal. As was mentioned earlier, when he had left home in his late teens, one of the first acts to which he committed himself was the ownership of a cat. Initially, its name was to be Karma, but then he remembered a show from his childhood which he had adored, and named the cat instead, Snowmeow. Eventually, he combined both names (though the wee beast would respond to neither), to the effect of something vaguely Irish sounding.
Spurred on my his successful care of another creature, and that his girlfriend had too many, he soon became the owner of his very own dog, of the Bouvier des Flandres breed, by the name of Wizard. He bonded with his dog, seeing something of the attraction which led man to domesticate said beasts, and was therefore completely blindsided when Wizard wound up killing Snowmeow. In the end, he lost Wizard, as he had nowhere to keep him once he moved out on his own, and when he heard sometime later that his dog had died as well, he could not help but believe that perhaps it might have been better for him to have stopped with Poppinsink.
To read the next installment, click here